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Han Schuil (1958) …. a contemporary Pop Art artist

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If you look at the Han Schuil paintings from recent years . Your first association is Pop Art. But look at them in retrospect and you must conclude that it is a natural development from his earlier works into these most recent ones.

Since the mid eighties he stayed true to his preferred material. An aluminium bearer, painted with alkyd and enamel.  I still admire his works and because of the use of aluminium  i think they stand out, giving the works both an abstract and an artificial industrial look. Schuil  is for me one of the great dutch artists . www.ftn-books.com has some Han Schuil titles worth collecting.

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Gabi Dziuba (1951)

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Jewelry artist and a lifetime friend of Günther Förg. Both had a different approach to art. Where Günther Förg chose for abstract geometric painting. Gaby Dziuba chose for jewelry. I think it is fair to say that Dziuba was Günther Förg his “muse”. He used Dziuba on many occasion as his model in his photographs and this is the reason why i would like to show in this blog that one specific catalogue is very important as an artist book. Dziuba had in 1998 a solo exhibition in the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag. The catalogue with this exhibition did not sell very well, but when you look into the colofon, you will find that many of the photographs within the catalogue were taken by Günther Förg. An excellent reason to pick up this catalogue for a reasonable price at www.ftn-books.com. It is still available , but when people realize that this is a disguised artist book by Günther Förg it will be picked up by many and will become a rare collectible.

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Jungwook Kim 김정욱….i need information please

 

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It is now almost 2 years ago that i acquired a beautiful Korean painting at auction by Jungwook Kim for our collection, but beside the origins and original purchase place of the painting / Gallery Skape in Seoul and its original purchase price, it is impossible for me to find more information on the painting or the artist. My question is …who can help?

I need the following information.

  • A complete biography of Jungwook Kim
  • has anybody photographs of this artist and if so at work in the studio?
  • have there been museum or gallery presentations in Europe or US beside the Berlin and Istanbul ones?
  • Are there US or European museums that collect work by this artist

Any help and information is appreciated. Thank you….

wilfried

 

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Robert Capa (1913-1954)… a war photographer

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Only 41 years of age , but with an iconic oeuvre he left us.. Some examples of photographs we all have encountered for more than once in your lives. Foremost Capa was a war photographer and left us some iconic photographs. but when you study the Magmum site   (https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL535353 ) you discover that beside his war photographs there are some tremendous other photographs to be found within the Magnum archives, but that his most important subject was WAR in all its aspects and cruelties. A true journalist photographer who showed us the cruelties of war . No polished photographs but a raw image of the reality.

 

What i stumbled upon when searching for material on Capa is that he had an affair with the famous Ingrid bergman. In 1945 after the fall of Nazi Germany, Capa was staying at the Hotel Ritz on Place Vendôme where he met Hollywood actress, Ingrid Bergman. Bergman was traveling around Europe to see the devastation caused by the war, and entertaining the troops. When they met, Bergman was still married to Petter Lindström who she had a baby with. Capa asked Bergman for dinner, and soon after they started to have an affair. In 1946, Bergman asked Capa to come to Hollywood with her, and he did. While Capa was in Hollywood, he visited her at a studio where she was filming, Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Notorious’. Capa had shot some still photos for the film which he was given no credit for when they were published Hitchcock later made a film with James Stewart and Grace Kelly in 1954, called ‘Rear Window’, loosely based on Capa and Bergman. Bergman wanted to marry Capa and also tried to convince him to quit his job to work in Hollywood. Capa knew that he wouldn’t fit in, and told Bergman that he can’t have a wife and kids because of his duties of work. Their affair ended when Capa left Hollywood for an assignment in Turkey.

There is a great Capa and Magnum publication available at www.ftn-books.com

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Jaap van de Ende (1944)…an abstract constructivist

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Personally i think that Jaap van den Ende is the only true successor of Jan Schoonhoven. Specially his early works have the similar qualities as the ones Schoonhoven made in the sixties and early seventies. The Stedelijk Museum has some excellent examples of these early works in which little cut out pieces of grey plastic foil are placed on a white surface according a well though over pattern. the System and pattern make the composition, but thus creating a fascinating , lively work of art.

A little like the way Struycken worked, but with a simplicity that resembles the great early Sol LeWitt works. I love this early works, Later he changed his style into more colorful compositions, but always along a line of well thought over abstract contructivist forms. Since 1997 his works become far more realistic. Seascapes, parks and landscapes are all painted with perfection . a fascinating artist which you can encounter in several dutch museum collections. There are some nice van den Ende publications available at www.ftn-books.com

 

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Arshile Gorky (1904-1948)

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Friend of famous surrealists like Breton, Tanguy and Matta, but above all finding his own way in painting . Influenced by Picasso, Cezanne and later Miro, Gorky received several exhibitions in the Netherlands. The dutch public was spoiled by the exhibitions in the Stedelijk and Boijmans and this was something different. It wasn’t abstraction as they encountered it in the fifties and sixties, but it also was not surrealism as the Boijmans had had on show.

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It was a symbiosis between cubism and surrealism and this combination made Gorky stand out from the other painters from his generation and for this combination he would become known after his suicide in 1948. There are some nice Gorky publications available at www.ftn-books.com

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Václav Cigler (1929)

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“I still do recall experiences from my childhood, and not only deeply human experiences but also experiences of places, experiences of nature related to the specific landscape of Vestín, its shape and composition, and the constant variability of light and color. I’m still working with those impressions today… I’m always thinking about the viewer and how I can evoke those feelings that go back to the free atmosphere of my youth.

…I was fascinated by the light and color properties of glass. Once I got into the glassmaking environment, I quickly realized that the material inspired me so much that I wanted to work with it for a long time. Optical glass, which I’ve worked with since the 1950s, is a material through which one can peer into the mystery of the universe on both a macro and a micro level, discovering things that had been hidden up to that point. For me, it reveals a world made unique with new shapes, light, and colors. Glass is a magic material, and in a certain sense a spiritual one. Glass is at once tangible and intangible. Like man, it is both material and spiritual. It has mass and yet it defies mass. Pure like water, transparent like air, it is thought and reality bringing into doubt our sensorial experience and at the same time enriching it with a new understanding. Glass is a box, an envelope, a tool, a mediator, a memory.

… Glass is the most imaginative material that man has ever created. The presence of glass in a human space conditions not only the space itself but also an as the user. Glass is for me a pretext for expressing a different spatial and emotional perception of the world. A perception made unique by the optical means offered by this material, as well as by the new possibilities for using it in space… in glass, there’s the authenticity of the material, the discovery that it has uncommon optical and material   properties, such as malleability. Glass by itself is a sufficient source of inspiration.”

This is what Václav Cigler says about his own work. A gifted (Glass) artist/sculptor who uses glass and light to make the most beautiful minimal objects possible. publication available at www.ftn-books.com

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Jan Voss (1936)… more complex over the years

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I have seen developing Jan Voss’s work over almost 4 decades now and with each new decade and exhibition, it looks to me that his works are getting more complex. The fundaments of his art are the same , but he squeezes more elements in the same drawing/painting. Brightly colored these are a joy for me to look at, but unfortunately for Voss, his work was only noticed by some curators in Belgium, France , the Netherlands and Germany and outside these countries his work is hardly known. It is in these countries his admirers can be found. For decades, Jan Voss has experimented with various different techniques, materials and groups of works. The underlying theme in his work is creating order in the midst of a perpetually moving chaos of complex situations – chaos and order, construction and decay of uncertain situations, similar to the conditions that exist in everyday life. Today, this state is bombarded by a number of signs and meanings which also play a major role in Jan Voss’s art.

There is one publication i would like to mention and which is of course available at www.ftn-books.com. It is the catalogue Jan Voss made for the Haags Gemeentemuseum, NADRUK. The exhibition was curated by Gerrit Jan de Rook and the book that was published with this exhibition was a true artist book of which the original edition was only 1000 copies, but i know for a fact that over 600 copies were destroyed, because they could not be sold. The remaining part was sold over the years at Sales and other special occasions. This artist book from 1984 is completely designed and filled by Jan Voss. A book in which he gives his Voss interpretation of the collection of the Gemeentemuseum. For those of you that have an interest in Voss, now is the time to pick up his works and books , still affordable and a great investment for the future.

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Viktor IV (1929-1986).. washed ashore in Amsterdam

From 1961 until his death Viktor IV lived in a boathouse at the river Amstel in Amsterdam. Almost like a clochard but not secluded, because during his life he kept a very keen eye on the art scene around him. This resulted in one of the most fascinating oeuvres of any modern artist. Building his works from lost and found material washed ashore wooden panels he developed a sign language which was typical for Viktor IV, including a new way of looking at time with his BULGAR watches. Roughly his artistic life can be divided into 3 parts. The first being the making of his ICONS, the second his sign language the RUNES and thirdly the JOURNAL pages he drew almost daily.

The site of the Viktor IV foundation gives some excellent information on the artist and person Viktor IV was www.viktoriv.nl

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There are very few publications on this artist, but www.ftn-books.com has the famous Stedelijk Museum publication available at its internet bookstore.

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Willem Hendrik Gispen (1890-1981)

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Sometimes when you search on the large WWW and try to find some information on an artist or subject it is hard to find a site with a good clean design, filled with sensible information and a joy to visit. Of course you must first look at www.ftn-books.com for books on Gispen, but after you have done just that…. please visit http://www.whgispen.nl

This site gives the best possible insight in Gispen and his works, unfortunately only in dutch, but the designs speak for themselves. Gispen is one of the true inventors of dutch design, being one of the first to design furniture out of tubular frames and making them suitable for offices and home interiors. The result is that many dutch families know of Gispen, because they lived their lives among Gispen furniture, but never knew the story of its designer. Please visit the Gispen site and do not forget that www.ftn-books.com has some nice books on Gispen.

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